AGRICULTURE 



characteristics are described by Stone as smallness of bone and ofFal ; width of carcase ; abund- 

 ance and fineness of fleece ; docility of temper ; symmetry of body ; and inherent quality of be- 

 coming fat upon relatively less aliment. Few horses were bred ; and there was nothing in the 

 arable part of farming to strike Stone's attention, except to call forth suggestions for improvement 

 in the management of common fields, inclosed arables, and pasture land. There was a diminishing 

 number of warrens, confined to two or three parishes. Swine were not in as high a state of per- 

 fection in Bedfordshire as in many other counties ; and Stone advises the introduction of Berkshires 

 or Hampshires. He incidentally mentions that there were no local societies for the improvement of 

 agriculture ; and he refers to the need of better housing for the agricultural classes. 



But the fullest and most convenient source of information concerning the local agriculture of 

 this period is Thomas Batchelor's General View of the Agriculture of the County of Bedford, drawn up 

 for the consideration of the ' Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement.' Several agricultural 

 societies had been formed in Britain during the latter decades of the eighteenth century ; and in 

 1793 the government assumed the direction and support of an association called The Board of Agri- 

 culture, which published quarto volumes of Communications and a number of county Reports. The 

 government withdrew its support in 1816, and the association soon after broke up. Batchelor's 

 General View was one of the county Reports. The author was a farmer at Lidiington, and besides 

 being a man of good local experience, he possessed considerable literary ability and was indefatigable 

 in research. He quotes largely from Arthur Young (but chiefly about the Duke of Bedford's 

 Devonshire estates), from a Mr. Foster who was an eminent landowner of Bedford, and from other 

 contemporaries. Stone's work he refers to as * the original report,' and occasionally quotes it. 



Batchelor finds that there were still farm-houses that were formerly seats of gentlemen who 

 farmed their own estates, a class that had considerably diminished in number. Many farm-houses 

 were inconveniently situated away from the centre of the farm. His remark that, many of them 

 being ' on low ground by the sides of public and other roads, . . . the drainings of the dungyards 

 are washed by the rains, without any possibility, in most cases, of applying it to the use of irrigating 

 the pasture land,' gives us a glimpse of agricultural procedure at the time. The cottages, consisting 

 of two, three, or four rooms, have small gardens seldom exceeding a tenth of an acre, and are let at 

 from zds. to 50^. or more, the average being about 35^. per annum. West of Bedford, where there 

 is limestone, they are built of stone ; in the north-e&st the cottages, as well as some of the farm- 

 houses, are built with a wooden frame-work and clay-plaster on a kind of hedge-work of splints, 

 generally known as * wattle and dab ' {sic). 



Batchelor finds that ' a consolidation of farms has not taken place in this county to the extent 

 to which it is said to be practised in several districts of Great Britain,' but ' the inclosing system, 

 and other causes, have diminished the number of farms within the last fifty years to a considerable 

 extent.' In his own parish (Lidiington), between 1758 and 1765 the number of small occupiers 

 had been reduced from twenty-two to fourteen. When he wrote, in the first decade of the nine- 

 teenth century, there were in Lidiington ten farms with a rental of less than ^^5, four above ^^5 

 and less than ;^30, six above ;^30 and less than ;^6o, four above ;^6o and less than ;f 100, seven 

 above j^ioo and less than ^^200, three above ,^200 and less than ;^300, and one above ;^300 and less 

 than /600. There were many large farms in almost every part of the county, some with a rental 

 as high as £100 or ;^8oo a year, and most parishes contained farms of from 200 to 300 acres. 

 The fact that the greatest number of large farms was in the southern and central parts of the county 

 he explains by noting that the district north of the Ouse is a poor clay soil, which affords no 

 great temptation to opulent farmers ; small occupiers are therefore more numerous in that part of 

 the county. * Several of the farmers have been formerly menial servants, and have obtained their 

 situations by persevering industry and economy.' By excluding cottage allotments ' which seldom 

 exceed two acres' he arrived at an average of 150 acres for the farms of the county as a whole. 



In an interesting quotation from remarks written by Mr. Foster of Bedford upon the 

 husbandry of the county, we find that, though, 



taking the county throughout, it is of average fertility, to say the same of the state of our husbandry 

 would be too much. Very considerable fields remain in the common open-field culture, and in many 

 new inclosures no great advantage is yet visible. The most ordinary tools, particularly of ploughs, are 

 in general use, and the mode of ploughing with two horses abreast has been adopted by comparatively 

 but few. The grass lands, except near the towns, or close to the farm-houses, are neglected and 

 exhausted. At the same time . . . much has been done in various ways towards general improve- 

 ment, and much more is shortly to be expected. 



Mr. Foster especially mentions the improved condition of roads ; increased activity in * drying the 

 land by deep ditches, by under-furrow and plough-draining ' ; the breed of sheep ' is amazingly 

 altered for the better,' some of the best Leicesters having found their way hither ; and improved 

 implements are coming into use. Particular mention is made of the emulation excited and knowledge 



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